Following Apple, Microsoft to open mini-stores in Best Buy

Much as the Redmond giant attempted to do with its own dedicated retail locations, Microsoft will now follow Apple's lead in opening mini-stores in Best Buy retail locations across North America.

Microsoft and Best Buy announced the collaboration on Wednesday, noting that it will bring Windows-focused mini-stores to 500 Best Buy locations in the United States and more than 100 Best Buy and Future Shop locations in Canada. The stores will be between 1,500 and 2,200 square feet in size, and they will showcase devices running Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's Xbox products, Windows software, and Microsoft's hardware peripherals.

Microsoft will provide training for more than 1,200 Best Buy sales associates in order to help them better pitch products to customers.

For Microsoft, the move may make it better able to compete against Apple in the new computing paradigm. The company's Windows 8 platform has continued to struggle in the face of a weakening PC market and an exploding mobile device market.

Microsoft has attempted to follow Apple's lead in the past, opening its own retail stores. Those locations, though, have failed to reproduce the considerable success Apple has achieved with its physical locations.

For Best Buy, the new Windows Stores are a continuation of a trend that has seen the retailer reaching out to major electronics brands, getting them to open mini-stores within Best Buy locations in an effort to transform the retailer. Best Buy has struggled to retain relevance in the era of online shopping, and one big problem the retailer faces is "showrooming," wherein customers check out devices within Best Buy before going home to order them online.

Apple was the first company to get its own dedicated mini-stores within Best Buy, with distinctive installations showing off MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones. Samsung has followed suit recently, opening 1,400 mini-stores over the past few months.

Seriously though, with all the android nerd employees steering people away from the apple section, Samsung and now Microsoft stores I am wondering when apple is going to pull out and allow best buy to slide into total irrelevancy.

Loser copycats. Really pathetic. As if their stand alone stores did not give them that distinction.

I think they are somewhat afraid of regular consumers and don't know how to market to them.

I've just given up on them. I started using Live mail, but it became a hassle to cancel the paid service. Then I had the free 50 GB which they later confiscated and reduced down to 7 GB. I was all ready to give them my money and use them as a cloud service, but they then pulled that cra@p.

No more. I have Office 2011, which was "free" through a technology fee for grad school, but that's all I use from them. Basically, they suck.

Maybe the X Box is fine, and their mice, but they have lost it when it comes to regular customers...

I would think this is more BestBuy recruiting MS rather than the other way around. BB has built too many massive stores that they can't keep operating if the online purchases and showrooming effect keeps building momentum. This could be their way of offloading costs to others.

First Samsung copied apple by doing this, now Microsoft. Both Samsung and Microsoft products were all available already. Not all apple products were originally available at best buy. They just want to look fancy, I still can't believe people spend $1,000 on a surface tablet. There are so many better options out there.